This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Bullet journaling will get you organized

Kat Akerfeldt offered to host a workshop on how to write in a blank notebook.

It sold out so fast she had to plan a second one.

Kat Akerfeldt, the curator of the post office historical society, writing in her Bullet Journal at Toronto's First Post Office. (Nick Kozak / for the Toronto Star)

Kat Akerfeldt's bullet journal. (Nick Kozak / for the Toronto Star)

Akerfeldt is the assistant curator of Toronto’s First Post Office, a functioning bureau and museum operated by the Town of York Historical Society. The office still receives and sorts paper mail so it’s not surprising Akerfeldt likes to deal with hard copies. But even she found it “amazing” she filled a room with people who wanted to learn about something called the Bullet Journal.

“The snowball has become enormous. There’s obviously a lot of interest,” Akerfeldt said.

She used to have lists and notebooks scattered all over: one for chores, 10K race times, weight goals, quilting progress, budgeting and day-to-day tasks. She tried different reminder apps. Lately, she’s combined everything into a single bullet journal.

Article Continued Below

“It’s easy to jot down all these little things and they add up to a big thing,” she said.

She described the bullet journal as a “rolling to-do list,” but it is, or can be, much more complex. Hence the workshop. The planner, journal and diary in one is a system of organization involving meticulous lists and bullet points for tasks, goals and events.

And it’s now a movement: a journal with a cult following, Pinterest pages, Facebook groups and even online celebrities within the #bujo community. (Yes, there’s a hashtag. There are many. Scroll #bulletjournaljunkies for organizational porn.)

Created by New York-based digital product designer Ryder Carroll in 2013, the method recently reached a critical mass of followers, inspiring a series of “what the hell is a Bullet Journal?”-type headlines.

The thing itself looks suspiciously familiar. You can use any notebook, though you can, of course, buy an official, branded one. Blank pages are filled with bullet points, dates and tasks, which are crossed out as they are accomplished — all of which sounds as intriguing as a Post-it note stuck to a fridge door.

But the essence of the bullet journal system is a system of brief entries — “rapid logging” — of daily events and tasks. At the end of the day or month, you scan for a bullet point that hasn’t been crossed out. This must either get “migrated” to the next month, your long-term “future log” or struck out if deemed unworthy of your time.

If it wasn’t worthy of your time, Carroll wants you to consider why.

Article Continued Below

“There really is a practice,” Carroll, 36, said in an interview. “The idea is that you create a habit of being mindful of your time and what you’re tasking yourself with.”

Carroll credits the system’s popularity with that factor.

“Because of the way it’s set up, it encourages you to get in touch with yourself,” he said. “The Internet is not a good place to go think.”

The last several years have brought an analog revival as millennials and their parents push back against an overwhelming technological culture: vinyl record sales have surged, adults are using colouring books and the now-ubiquitous Moleskine journal outlived the PalmPilot, which was released the same year.

Part of the massive value of that particular notebook, author David Sax wrote in his new book, TheRevenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, is linked to its tangible identity: physical things engage the senses, fostering emotional connections that digital ephemera can’t provide. And research has shown that handwriting is better than typing for learning and memory, and that writing can itself be therapeutic.

Carroll’s YouTube instructional videos have been viewed more than four million times. Originally intended as an efficient, minimalist system, the bullet journal has swept across social media and encouraged fans to create and share customized, elaborate pages or “spreads,” many of which involve collages, line art, calligraphy, even watercolours, to organize all kinds of lifestyles.

At first Carroll rejected this idea, in case newbies found it overwhelming, but it’s how users found each other online. The Facebook group Bullet Journal Junkies has more than 68,000 members.

There’s now a group for every personality and pastime: bullet journaling for mental health; for sewing and crocheting; professionals, vegans, LGBT people, Christians, parents who home-school their kids; even those who are actually addicted to their bullet journal and seeking help.

For many, the journal has evolved into a habit tracker — did I drink enough water? Take 10,000 steps? What is my mood? — with the results shared online, as well as elaborate works of penmanship, season-appropriate doodles and endless spreads of food diaries, schedules, inspirational quotes and personal disclosures.

That’s how Cassie Owoc fills her pages. The 28-year-old college student, freelance writer and restaurant server discovered the bullet journal on Pinterest last year and swears it’s helped organize the many facets of her life.

“When I cross off a task, I feel much more productive and it makes me want to continue doing more tasks and crossing them off the list,” Owoc said. “It’s like a reward system, almost.”

Bullet journalists may get hooked when they see progress, which might explain its unlikely following.

“The popularity of the bullet system is somewhat surprising because it is quite complex,” said Daniel Levitin, psychology professor at McGill University and author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload.

A major draw might be “externalizing” a to-do list to allow the mind to work or to wander, he said.

“The flexibility of a blank notebook can help get your juices flowing more than would tapping everything out on a screen.”

Or it may be that bullet journalists have inadvertently adopted some key principles of cognitive and behavioural psychology and combined those with goal setting theory, said Dominique Morisano, clinical psychologist and assistant professor of public health at the University of Toronto.

Morisano often asks her own clients to start a journal in which to log their thoughts, behaviour and activity, noting intense emotional events and gratitude.

And though the bullet journal has been likened to Marie Kondo’s celebrated method of decluttering — the one that involves throwing out everything that fails to “spark joy” — but for the mind, Morisano said the fact goals can be “migrated” and not just discarded reduces the feeling of failure and encourages carrying on despite setbacks.

“Conscious goals influence action unconsciously,” she said.

But as for whether dressing up a notebook just to share it online becomes an end itself, rather than a means, technology analyst Carmi Levy said balance is important whether using a bullet journal or something with a screen.

“If we spend so much time building the perfect bullet journal, tweaking it with excruciating attention and detail and flogging it relentlessly on social media, we risk diverting our attention from the very important life activities we had originally hoped to improve,” he said.

I tried it: Bullet Journal

I have no organizational system, mental or physical.

I have a hardbound notebook I use infrequently and rarely use the reminders or calendar app on my iPhone. I have Post-it notes stuck all over my workspace, names and phone numbers without context I eventually find baffling and throw away. I have no budget and no sense of the calories I’ve consumed or miles I’ve run.

Would starting a bullet journal help me get it together? As a fan of retro stuff with a deep distrust of technology, I should have latched onto it long ago.

There’s a test I want to write but the study guide has been on my kitchen table for a month, as pristine and unexamined as the day it arrived in the mail. I also wanted to join the Y because a hip injury has made it impossible to go jogging, my preferred exercise.

So I got my hands on a Leuchtturm1917, the preferred hardbound notebook of bullet journalists, and a couple of nice pens.

At first it seemed to have the pointless complexity of an app like Snapchat but I figured it out after watching the YouTube instructional video six or eight or 15 times.

A blank journal is satisfying to write in, especially with my new, felt-tip, Japanese-made pens. I dutifully made my “weekly log” and “future log” and an index. I then dutifully wrote “sign up for Y” and “study for test” in my best handwriting.

But it didn’t exactly light a fire. I got a gym membership but still don’t really work out. I put off studying again and again. Of course it’s fun to write down little tasks and cross them off: “Call mom” is easy. “Be more motivated” and “reorient thinking” are much harder. Maybe it’s because I don’t use Instagram or Pinterest, so no Internet strangers were out there cheering me on.

The system isn’t a salve, and no fancy notebook or smooth-gliding pen can force you to sit down and read a textbook or stop moping about how boring you find the elliptical machine.

The #bujo method should, ideally, instill a closer examination of priorities. At least, that’s the idea behind abandoning the unfinished. But just because I didn’t bother to do my personal homework doesn’t mean it wasn’t important to me. It more likely means I’m lazy, and there’s no app — or fancy leather-bound notebook — for that.

How to bullet journal

Get a blank notebook

Create an index

Create a Future Log — basically a year at a glance — by dividing the following blank “spreads” into 12 sections, one for each month; add to index.

Create a Monthly Log by listing all the days of the month on one side of a spread and on the opposite side, write a monthly task list. Denote each task with a dot bullet point; add to index

Create a Daily Log by writing the day’s date and all the tasks, events and notes. Events get a circle. Notes get a dash. Priority stuff gets a star. This is the “rapid logging” system.

At the end of the month, set up the next monthly log. Scan previous daily logs for tasks that weren’t completed. If they are still worth your time, they must be “migrated” by drawing an arrow and copying into the new task list or future log. If no longer relevant to your life, strike it out. Consider why.

Check Pinterest and Instagram for ideas on how to make your spreads look cool. Or leave it basic. Either is acceptable to the bullet journal junkies.

More from The Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com